The tobacco industry is attacked not only for the reason of selling a product being detrimental to health, but also for having a product where the consumers thereof spread waste packages, and product residues around.
Thus the packages of tobacco products are fairly complex, often consisting of an inner lining, an outer wrapping as well as an utmost, transparent protecting sheet.
The lining made of paper will become destructed fairly rapidly, while the outer wrapping and the transparent sheet, often made of polymeric material or coated with a polymeric material will become destructed more slowly, if thrown into the nature. Another piece of cigarettes being hard to destruct is the filter part, which can stay for very long times in the nature.
In some countries, in Sweden in particular, the habit of oral snuffing is quite common. The snuff is thereby marketed in snuffooxes, which previously were made of hard paper, or cardboard, but today such boxes are manufactured from polyolefins, such as polypropylene. The box as such is rather stiff and will hardly become destructed for a very long time when disposed off in the nature.
Modern snuffing, further, makes use of dosage packaged snuff, i.e., snuff is packed and administered in form of small bags made of a non-woven fibrous material allowing a penetration of the nicotine extract into the mouth cavity. However, “emptied” snuff bags are readily spat out, and will not become destructed by nature that easily, as well. The bags are made of non-woven fibrous polymers, in order to withstand the demands for mechanical durability while being wetted in the mouth cavity during extraction.
Thus the nature will become rather mixed up with tobacco product waste, which waste will become an environmental problem, at least from an esthetical point of view. This has been, and will be a problem to the industry.
In the present context a tobacco product package includes cigarette packages as described above, cigarette filters, snuffboxes, snuff bags, cigarillo packages, chewing tobacco packages, smoking pipe tobacco packages, packages for tobacco to be rolled, as well as cigar packages, although the later ones are less frequent than the former ones.
Most polymeric package materials can be retrieved in one or more of three basic ways, by recycling of the material, by biological decomposition of the material and by energy retrieval by using the material as a fuel.
In general packages of all kinds are often disposed off in the nature and cause an environmental problem. Or they are disposed off in nature as part of an organized compost program. In any case they are made subject to biological degradation by weather conditions, rain, ice; snow, heat and cold, by UV-irradiation, by microorganisms, by different creatures that can nourish from polymers and their rest products, by mechanical means, and other factors.
Most packages used today, are packages having a weight of up to around 20 g, independent of size, such as a number of different food packages. Among those are bags for carrying food and other house-hold articles, food packages as such, e.g., meat troughs, wrapping films, bags, and others, flower and plant pots and flower wrappings (often cast polypropylene film), vegetable wrappings (polyethylene and cast polypropylene films), bags for sweets and snacks.
In general polyolefins are used at the manufacture of such packages, such as polyethylene, polypropylene, poly vinyl acetate and polystyrene. The polymers can be produced in different ways, including being blown or expanded forms to provide a voluminous end product for insulating (impact or temperature) purposes.
Polymer Degradation and Stability 80 (2003) 39-43, I. Jakubowicz, “Evaluation of degradability of biodegradable polyethylene (PE)” discloses a study of thermo-oxidative degradation of polyethylene films containing pro-oxidant at three different temperatures, whereby the parameter oxygen concentration was varied as well. The paper discloses that polyolefins are hydrophobic hydrocarbon polymers, and thereby they are resistant to hydrolysis and can thus not be hydrobiodegradable. Polyolefins, as commercial products, are moreover resistant to oxidation and biodegradation due to the presence of anti-oxidants and stabilizers.
However, the polyolefins can be made oxobiodegradable by the use of pro-oxidant additives. Such pro-oxidants can be based on metal combinations capable of yielding two metal ions of similar stability and with oxidation number differing by one unit, e.g., Mn2+/Mn3+. The material will thereby degrade by a free radical chain reaction involving atmospheric oxygen. The primary products are hydroperoxides, which can either thermolyse or photolyse under the catalytic action of a pro-oxidant, leading to chain scission and the production of low molecular mass oxidation products such as carboxylic acids, alcohols, ketones and low molecular mass hydrocarbon waxes. Peroxidation leads also to hydrophilic surface modification; this is favorable to micro-organisms, which can then bio-assimilate the low molecular mass oxidation products. It is also stated that degradation in compost of PE that contained pro-oxidants could be very slow due to the low partial pressure of oxygen. The tests performed were carried out at temperatures of 50, 60, and 70° C. The paper shows that the films tested that the calculate lifetime for the materials, defined as time to achieve 10,000 molecular weight, and if assumed 25° C. as in-use temperature, then, using the determined activation energy it will be found that it will take about 4.5 years for one of the materials and about 2.5 years for one of the materials (containing the double amount of pro-oxidant) to reach this limit.